Random News Stories

[Leo Enticknap]

I guess Marx would have considered this a vindication of his theories:

Want to be buried next to Karl Marx? Highgate Cemetery will make room for you ... for £25,000

North London graveyard secures £100,000 of National Lottery funding to help add lucrative new burial sites

Craig Simpson 16 January 2024 • 8:00am

Highgate Cemetery will make room for new graves near Karl Marx’s tomb and charge £25,000 for each one.

The working cemetery and north London tourist site has secured £100,000 of National Lottery funding to help secure its future through conservation work, and landscaping to add to the 53,000 graves on the crowded site.

Highgate will begin making room for lucrative new burials near the tomb of Marx, on ground that is particularly coveted by communists.

Former leaders in the Iraqi and South African Communist parties are buried near the final resting place of the German philosopher, whose Left-wing cachet could help maintain the cemetery’s income stream.

Ian Dungavell, the chief executive of the cemetery, said that new burials were important to keep Highgate a “living” attraction.

He said: “What makes Highgate Cemetery so interesting is that it is living heritage, not just a relic. It is still a place where things are happening now, where people are buried, and where people come to remember them.

“From its earliest days, it was a visitor attraction and a place of burial, and both activities are essential to its future.”

Space is at a premium in the 37-acre site near Hampstead Heath, which is the final resting place of famous figures including George Michael, George Eliot, Douglas Adams and Michael Faraday.

The cost of burial at the site ranges from around £5,000 for cremation plots, to £25,000 and upwards for a full grave, depending on size and location.

The cemetery was given powers under the Highgate Cemetery Act 2022 to clear old graves and make room for new burials, which represent around 50 per cent of its income, with visitors’ entrance fees roughly making up the other half of its funding.

Some older grave-sites, where the monuments are crumbling and contemporary relatives of the deceased are also long dead, have been earmarked for new burials, and the prime real estate near the occasionally defaced tomb of Marx will be first to be developed.

Mr Dungavell has set up an objection system, allowing surviving relatives of the 173,000 people buried in Highgate to stop individual graves being redeveloped.

The exiled Marx died in London in 1883 and was buried in a modest grave, before his body was reinterred in 1954 under a vast tomb paid for by the Communist Party of Great Britain, close to which were later buried Saad Saadi Adi, the Iraqi communist leader, Dr Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo, the chairman of the South African Communist Party, and Paul Foot, the Socialist Worker journalist.

Highgate will develop the crumbling graves near Marx’s original grave, around 20 feet from his current tomb, but work will rely on extensive landscaping and flood-proofing.

The cemetery has secured a £100,000 National Lottery Heritage Fund grant which will support this work as part of the Unlocking Highgate Cemetery project covering landscaping, building conservation, and improving visitor experience of the site.

The site of the 19th-century cemetery, built for profit at a time when churchyards were filling up, is covered with ash trees riddled with ash die-back and at risk of falling on to grave monuments and visitors.

Many of these trees will be cleared in planned landscaping, drainage will be improved, wildlife protected, and paths will be relaid to provide easier and step-free access for visitors.

A Grade I listed row of Egyptian-themed tombs will be conserved with help from the Heritage Fund, along with Grade I listed catacombs at the highest point in the cemetery.

An Anglican and a Dissenters’ chapel on the site will also be restored, and opened up as public spaces. Funding will also support community outreach, to help make tours and interpretation of the site more wide-ranging and accessible.

Lottery funding is part of a £15 million tranche of grants aimed at providing better access to green spaces.

[Leo Enticknap]

This one really hits close to home: ONT is my local airport (I live 19 miles from it), I have flown on Alaska PDX-ONT flights several times in the past, and I always try to get an exit row seat if possible (I'm 6'3" and with abnormally long upper legs, so I do so for the legroom) when I do so.

San Bernardino Sun

Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737-9 Max jets after window appears to blow out on Ontario-bound flight
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 returned safely to Portland International Airport around 5 p.m. PT after “the crew reported a pressurization issue”

By Cnn Com Wire Service
PUBLISHED: January 6, 2024 at 7:14 a.m. | UPDATED: January 6, 2024 at 8:37 a.m.

Alaska Airlines has temporarily grounded its fleet of Boeing 737-9 Max aircraft after one of its planes made an emergency landing in Oregon on Friday, officials said – an incident that a passenger says involved a panel and window blowing out in flight.

A panel of the fuselage, including the panel’s window, popped off shortly after takeoff, passenger Kyle Rinker told CNN.

“It was really abrupt. Just got to altitude, and the window/wall just popped off and didn’t notice it until the oxygen masks came off,” Rinker said.

Firefighters were called to assess minor injuries after the landing, and no serious injuries were reported, the Port of Portland Fire Department said.

A passenger’s video posted to social media shows a side section of the fuselage, where a window would have been, missing – exposing passengers to the outside air. The video, which appears to have been taken from several rows behind the incident, shows oxygen masks deployed throughout the airplane, and least two people sitting near and just behind the missing section.

In a statement late Friday, Alaska Airlines said it was working with Boeing to understand what took place on Flight 1282. The aircraft is a 737-9 Max that received its certificate of airworthiness on October 25, 2023, according to the FAA.

The airline’s grounded fleet of 65 Boeing 737-9 aircraft is expected to undergo full maintenance and safety inspections over the next several days before being returned to service, the airline said.

“My heart goes out to those who were on this flight – I am so sorry for what you experienced,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said in a statement.

Though the airline has acknowledged an incident on Friday’s Flight 1282, it has not detailed what the incident entailed. The plane “landed safely back at Portland International Airport with 171 guests and six crew members,” the airline said.

According to FlightAware, the flight was airborne for about 20 minutes. The plane departed from Portland International Airport around 5:07 p.m. local time and landed at 5:27 p.m.

‘A really loud bang… and a whoosh noise’

Evan Smith, a passenger on the flight, told CNN affiliate KPTV that he was sitting at least six rows in front of the section where the incident took place. “There was a really loud bang toward the rear of the plane and a whoosh noise and all of the masks dropped,” Smith said.

Emma Vu, another passenger, was asleep and woke up to a sensation of falling and seeing emergency masks drop down, she told CNN in a phone call. She apparently woke up after the panel section popped off; it wasn’t clear how close to the missing panel she was.

Vu said she texted her parents their code word for emergencies to let them know about the incident. “I’ve never had to use it before, but I knew that this was that moment,” Vu said.

People sitting on either side of her comforted her, she said. “The flight attendant came over too, and told me it was going to be OK,” Vu said. “The fact that everyone was kind of freaking out and she took that time to kind of make me feel like I was the only passenger – honestly that was really sweet.”

Vu plans to take a different flight to her intended destination on Saturday morning, she said.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the incident, both agencies said.

In a statement to CNN, Boeing said it was aware of an incident involving Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 and was working to gather additional information.

Previous issues with Boeing’s 737 Max jets

CNN reported last month that Boeing has asked airlines to inspect all of their 737 Max jets for a potential loose bolt in the rudder system after an airline discovered a potential problem with a key part on two aircraft.

CNN transportation analyst Mary Schiavo said Saturday that issue probably had nothing to do with Friday’s incident. But, overall, the issues raise serious questions about Boeing quality control in manufacturing that the FAA must investigate, Schiavo said.

Boeing’s engineering and quality problems have posed major challenges for the company. The crashes of two of 737-8 Max jets that killed all 346 people on board the flights led to a crippling 20-month grounding of the plane. It also was one of the most expensive corporate tragedies in history, costing Boeing more than $20 billion.

The Max returned to the air carrying passengers in most markets around the globe beginning in late December 2020. But it has encountered other problems, including in April when Boeing said it has discovered a manufacturing issue with some 737 Max aircraft after a supplier used a “non-standard manufacturing process” during the installation of two fittings in the rear fuselage – although Boeing insisted the problem did not constitute a safety risk.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

CNN’s Paradise Afshar and Tina Burnside contributed to this report.

It seems to me that four absolute miracles happened here:

• The accident happened 20,000 feet or so below cruising altitude, at which the higher speed and pressure differential would likely have been able to suck people out from a greater distance, and nearby passengers would likely have taken their seatbelts off
• The window seat next to the plug door that blew out was unoccupied
• The door plug did not damage any control surfaces after separating from the fuselage
• The door plug did not cause any injuries (or worse) when it hit the ground

I would further speculate that they're going to have to find the door plug in order to figure out what happened, which, as it looks like the accident took place somewhere over the Cascades, is going to be about as easy as finding D.B. Cooper's loot (which is probably in the same vicinity).

[Frank Cox]

That would be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKOftmWGGXk

[Leo Enticknap]

Mickey Mouse Horror Films Announced as Copyright Expires

Oh boy! Barely 24 hours after Disney's initial copyright on Mickey Mouse expired, two new indie horror films starring the beloved character have been announced.

"Steamboat Willie," the first Disney movie to feature Mickey, entered the public domain under US law on Monday, 95 years on from its initial release.

That means anyone is now free to copy, share, reuse and adapt the primitive, early versions of the characters that appear within the film, including Mickey and his girlfriend Minnie.

Despite warnings from Disney that it would seek to safeguard its most iconic character, opportunistic filmmakers had been expected to quickly announce their own unofficial remakes and adaptations -- and they did not disappoint.

"Mickey's Mouse Trap" will feature a masked killer dressed as Mickey stalking a group of young friends through an amusement arcade, while another untitled horror-comedy sees a sadistic mouse tormenting unsuspecting ferry passengers.

"We just wanted to have fun with it all," said "Mickey's Mouse Trap" director Jamie Bailey, in a trailer posted on YouTube.

"I mean it's Steamboat Willie's Mickey Mouse murdering people. It's ridiculous. We ran with it and had fun doing it and I think it shows."

The low-budget horror-comedy is expected to launch in March.

Meanwhile filmmaker Steven LaMorte -- known for "The Mean One," a 2022 slasher romp inspired by The Grinch -- is working on his own "twisted take" on Mickey.

"'Steamboat Willie' has brought joy to generations, but beneath that cheerful exterior lies a potential for pure, unhinged terror," he said in a press release.

Production on the untitled film is due to begin this spring.

Both projects are reminiscent of "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey," a micro-budget slasher film that drew headlines last year after the copyright on the first A.A. Milne books expired.

Analysts say Disney will be watching closely, and is likely to send in the lawyers if anyone oversteps.

Only the earliest, black-and-white version of Mickey is in the public domain -- not the colorful character from later Disney films like "Fantasia."

And trademark protections mean that any film or product that could mislead consumers into thinking it was made by Disney could be liable.

"We will, of course, continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright, and we will work to safeguard against consumer confusion caused by unauthorized uses of Mickey and our other iconic characters," said a Disney statement.

But LaMorte told Variety he was not concerned.

"We are doing our due diligence to make sure there's no question or confusion of what we're up to," he said.

"This is our version of a public domain character."

I'm sure that Toho is hard at work on the script of Godzilla vs. Mickey, too...

[Randy Stankey]

"Hey! This isn't a drive-through!"

"Well, it is, now!"

[Leo Enticknap]

There was a brief fashion for ram-raiding (as the media named the practice at the time) ATMs and stores with small, high value goods, e.g. jewelry stores, in Britain in the late '90s and early '00s. Its legacy was reinforced bollards sprouting up in front of them, which probably remain to this day.

Obituary

Maureen Sweeney, Irish postmistress who reported the 1944 storm that delayed D-Day – obituary

She did not know the data she sent from Europe’s most westerly weather station went straight to the Allies – even though Ireland was neutral

Maureen Sweeney, who has died aged 100, was a postmistress on the west coast of Ireland who supplied the weather reports of a storm in the Atlantic that persuaded Eisenhower to delay D-Day by 24 hours.

The Blacksod lighthouse-cum-post office, on the wind-battered Mullet peninsula in County Mayo, was Europe’s most westerly weather observation station. Every hour, day and night, reports had to be collected on barometric pressure, wind speed, temperature, precipitation, water vapour and other variables, using rudimentary instruments, by the assistant postmistress Maureen Flavin (as she then was); her future husband, Ted Sweeney, the lighthousekeeper; his mother, the postmistress; and his sister. Their reports were then transmitted over crackling telephone line to Ballina, Co Mayo, then to the Irish Meteorological Service in Dublin.

What they did not know was that, although Ireland was ostensibly neutral, the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, was sharing weather intelligence with the Allies, but not the Nazis. (With a similar sleight of hand, the Irish government had ordered huge stone signs saying “Éire” to be erected on the Irish coastline to ward off belligerent aircraft; each sign had a special number, which in fact made them invaluable for navigation, but these numbers were only supplied to the Allies.)

From Dublin, the Blacksod reports were passed to the UK Met Office in Dunstable and the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force, under the command of General Dwight Eisenhower. By the start of June 1944, around 5,000 ships, 11,000 aircraft and 156,000 Allied troops were assembled for the invasion of Normandy. D-Day was set for June 5, when the full moon and tides were favourable for seaborne and airborne landings.

By June 2, D-Day minus three, the American meteorologists were optimistic about a ridge of high pressure, but the Brits were “unmitigatedly pessimistic”, according to Group Captain James Stagg, Operation Overlord’s Chief Meteorological Officer. Although the RAF, the Royal Navy and United States Army Air Force had meteorologists reporting from various stations, and from weather ships in the Atlantic, the Blacksod reports – where the storms would first hit land – were keenly awaited as a significant piece in the puzzle.

At 1am on June 3 1944, her 21st birthday, Maureen Flavin was on duty when she noticed a sharp drop in the barometer, and force-six winds. She woke the more experienced Sweeney, who confirmed her readings, then transmitted her report. At 11am, a woman with an English accent rang, and asked: “Please check. Please repeat.” Two hours later, she rang back and asked them to double check again.

They checked and rechecked, but the figures remained the same. Stagg drew the conclusion that gale-force winds, low cloud and rain would still be affecting the English Channel at dawn on June 5, when 130,000 amphibious troops would be on the move, and advised Eisenhower to postpone the invasion.

If the June window of moon and tide were missed, the invasion would have to wait another month – a scenario “too bitter to contemplate,” as Eisenhower put it, since Rommel was urging for more Panzer divisions to be diverted from Calais to Normandy, to fortify that coast. But Eisenhower did postpone the invasion, thereby averting disaster. The prophesied storm struck, and a jubilant Rommel, confident that no landing could be made, returned to Germany for his wife’s birthday.

On June 4, oblivious to the havoc her reports were causing, Maureen Flavin began to see the pressure-drop easing. At noon, Ted Sweeney reported that the rain had stopped.

The next day, at Eisenhower’s morning briefing, a cheer was raised by the latest Blacksod report, confirming a window of fair weather – of which the Germans, who had no weather boats west of Ireland, were unaware. The next day, the Allied invasion of Europe went ahead.

It was not until 1956 that Maureen Flavin learnt how momentous her work had been.

She was born on June 3 1923 in Knockanure, north Kerry. Aged 20, she applied to be assistant postmistress at Blacksod, two and a half days’ journey away. It was only when she arrived that she realised she would have to do meteorological work, but “you fell into it automatically,” she said.

She didn’t enjoy the night duty, in case the Germans invaded. Once, she and Ted Sweeney saw a submarine surface, but they never knew if it had been German or British.

Maureen Sweeney was the subject of the 2019 RTE documentary Storm Front in Mayo, later broadcast in America as Three Days in June. In 2021, she was given a special honour from the US House of Representatives.

In 1946, she married Ted Sweeney, and eventually took over from her mother-in-law as postmistress, only retiring in the 2000s. Ted was succeeded as lighthousekeeper by their son, Vincent.

Maureen Sweeney, born June 3 1923, died December 17 2023

[Frank Cox]

burstall-credit-union-break-in.jpg
I'd like to make a withdrawal?

Someone stole a loader and drove it into the Burstall Credit Union building to steal the ATM yesterday.

And have (so far) gotten away with it.)

(Burstall is a tiny little Saskatchewan town near the Alberta border.)

[Leo Enticknap]

I remember reading a story some years ago about a wino who fell asleep on a London tube train late at night, and no-one spotted him when it got to the end of the line. The driver shut the train down, got off, clocked off, and went home, leaving it parked at a platform at the terminus station. A couple of hours later, the wino woke up, went into the driver's cab, and tried to start the train up and drive it back to the station he'd intended to get off at in the first place. He managed to drive it a considerable distance before automatic signalling equipment detected that there was something wrong, and stopped it.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.ocregister.com/2023/11/0...ail-in-orange/

By Tony Saavedra | tsaavedra@scng.com | Orange County Register
PUBLISHED: November 9, 2023 at 11:19 a.m. | UPDATED: November 13, 2023 at 9:28 a.m.

A woman attempting to visit an inmate last weekend at the Theo Lacy detention facility in Orange was inadvertently locked overnight in a jail visiting area, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has confirmed.

Sheriff’s officials did not disclose the identity of the woman, who was described only as being in her 30s.

The woman was at the maximum-security jail to visit an inmate on Saturday and was directed to a public visiting area for the barracks section of the facility, confirmed sheriff’s spokesperson Carrie Braun.

Braun said the inmate the woman wanted to see was unavailable and she fell asleep in a visiting booth while waiting. No one noticed the woman when the area was closed at 5 p.m. She was not discovered until the area was reopened the next morning at 8 a.m.

Braun said the woman was immediately treated for a laceration to her hand, but she would not disclose how the woman sustained the cut.

Security cameras inside the waiting area can only be monitored from the guard station inside the room, which was not manned overnight, Braun said. There is no phone inside the visiting waiting area. The woman was not allowed by state law to bring her cellphone into the jail.

The woman was in an area not freely accessible to inmates.

An internal investigation is underway to determine how the woman was locked inside and whether any procedures or policies need to be changed, Braun said. One immediate change has already been made — a supervisor must check the area at least once during overnight hours.

Additionally, an emergency phone will be installed in the waiting area.

“This unfortunate incident should never have occurred,” Braun said. “The department is committed to fully investigate and ensure this never happens again.”

Theo Lacy has a maximum capacity of 3,442 inmates, according to the sheriff’s website.

I find it amazing that nobody would check a jail waiting room. I figured every inch of a jail would be either monitored or patrolled on a regular basis. Silly me, I guess.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Tesla's and I imagine other well designed (notice I didn't say well built) electric vehicles have heaters in the battery cases. They are mainly to extend the range of the vehicle on cold days and nothing more...

[Leo Enticknap]

Especially if you crank it up to11...

Being moderately serious for a moment, it would likely deliver intense, localized heat to one spot on the battery casing, which I'm guessing is what set it off. I haven't used a European-style popup toaster since moving to the US (my wife prefers toaster ovens), but my vague memory of them is that they pull hundreds of watts at least, and possibly heading into kilowatts. If all that heat is being applied to one 5" square spot under the car, a tiny part of the battery pack is going to cook, while the rest of it remains below freezing (until it ignites!). If he'd put, say, an electric blanket under there, he'd likely have gotten away with it - other than that the power that would have cost him would likely be an order of magnitude more than that needed to drive the EV with a cold battery.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

That must have been one hell of a toaster...

[Leo Enticknap]

Sticking with the theme of electric vehicles, I think I may have found the first documented case of somebody using one in an attempt to secure a Darwin Award nomination.

Man Burns His EV To The Ground Trying To Warm The Battery With A Toaster
Danish Police say they "strongly discourage" this practice.

By Bradley Brownell ; Published 12 hours ago

A Danish EV driver faces a hefty fine for negligent actions that led to the destruction of their own car and damage to their own home. On Saturday, in order to combat the below-freezing overnight lows in Stenlille, Denmark—about 40 miles from Copenhagen—and keep their electric car’s battery warm, the homeowner placed a toaster underneath the car and cranked the knob to eleven. Sometimes you have to think through your ideas once or twice before acting on them.

Danish police confirm nobody was injured in the resulting fire, though the EV was fully consumed by the blaze. The car was parked in a carport attached to the home at the time, and both structures were damaged. Some reports of the incident indicate a neighbor’s home was also damaged.

“The cause of the fire is most likely to be found in the toaster that the owner of the car had placed under the front of his car to keep the battery warm,” police said on Monday.

While many of the detractors of electric vehicles like to point and laugh at every EV that burns down, it’s important to note that car fires are far more prevalent than you think. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, some 117,000 passenger vehicles catch fire every year, almost one every five minutes, and that’s just in the U.S. The data out of Sweden, where EVs are extremely prevalent, seems to indicate that electric cars are actually much less likely to catch on fire than gasoline cars. Of the country’s 3,400 vehicle fires, just 0.4 percent were electric vehicles.

There’s no indication of the make or model of the Danish EV that died by toaster, but statistically speaking it probably wouldn’t have burned down had it not been for the incorrectly used small appliances. While EVs do work better with warm batteries, it just isn’t worth the risk to try warming them with anything other than parking them in a garage. The battery will still function cold, albeit with reduced range.

Most modern EVs have a battery pre-warming function, which will help with range in the cold. The best practice is just to keep the car plugged in on the coldest nights. If your EV has phone app, you can just crank up the heat 30 minutes before you need to leave, and it’ll not only warm itself, but give you a nice cozy interior to walk out to in the morning. That’s a win-win.

[Frank Cox]

Go get 'im Flash! Heh heh heh....

635640003901237718-635639993342552916-JAMES-BEST-DUKES-OF-HAZZARD_2679388_ver1.0.resized.jpg

[Leo Enticknap]

Tesla Briefly Serves as Plane Before Crashing Into California House

You don’t usually expect much to happen at 7:00 a.m. in a quiet suburb in California, but last Friday, the driver of a Tesla Model X surprised everyone when she lost control of her car and drove it into a house.

After losing control, the driver hit a curb, drove through a yard, hit two parked cars, smashed through a fence and sailed over a swimming pool before crashing into the kitchen, SFGATE reports.

Thankfully, no one was in the kitchen at the time of the crash, and neither the driver nor her daughter who was in the passenger seat, were seriously injured. Exactly what caused the 70-year-old driver to lose control has yet to be determined, but it sounds like they were traveling extremely fast, with Jerami Surratt, a public information officer for the San Mateo Police Department, telling reporters the car “probably flew 40 to 50 feet through the air, allowing it to clear the swimming pool.”

Surratt also said the car was moving downhill, and the driver was not using Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving mode, which is not actually fully autonomous despite the name suggesting that it is. “There were witnesses in the neighborhood that saw the Tesla slow down to a stop and accelerate very quickly, but exactly what happened is still under investigation,” he said.

“Honestly just amazed that no one was hurt… if my mother was in the house, she would absolutely have been drinking her tea at 7 a.m. in the kitchen,” the homeowner’s daughter Meredith Donato told KTVU. “There’s obviously property damage, but at the end of the day it’s just stuff.”

Resident Sean Carmichael also told KTVU that a similar crash happened about 25 years ago on that exact street, adding “Maybe it’s time to put some speed bumps down this road now.”

Photo: San Mateo Police Department

dc8519643079b627b65176cb416fb20d.webp

Whoever wrote the "briefly serves as plane" headline clearly wasn't around in the 1980s, when either Knight Rider or The Dukes of Hazzard would have provided ample inspiration for a flying car headline! That having been said, naming a Tesla after General Lee wouldn't exactly fit with its eco-friendly, PC credentials. I can think of some alternatives, but would likely violate the no politics rule if I went too far down that road. Bo and Luke climbing through the windows into the Greta Thunberg doesn't really work, somehow...